Drinking containers or vessels of various types including travel mugs are well known in the art. Such drinking vessels have been designed for various purposes such as to be used on bicycles, while hiking, and doing various indoor and outdoor activities.
In this art field, much effort has been undertaken to design various removable lids, closure devices or other mechanisms for opening and closing a drinking or fluid dispensing orifice so as to allow the convenient dispensing of the source of fluid contained within the drinking vessel, and further, to prohibit the spilling of the fluid contained within the drinking vessel should it be accidentally overturned.
Assorted different commercially available products are available which provide various drinking spouts or tops which may be opened for drinking, or closed and placed in a sealed orientation, and which will allow the user to drink from the vessel under various operational conditions.
While the aforementioned prior art devices have operated with varying degrees of success, there are perceived shortcomings with their individual designs which have detracted from the commercial usefulness. For example, in some of the prior art drinking vessels utilized heretofore, such drinking vessels have not sealed reliably and therefore leak when the drinking vessel is accidentally overturned, such as might be occasioned when the drinking vessel is being used in an automobile or being carried in a backpack, or similar personally carried luggage. While attempts have been made to correct the readily apparent shortcomings in these designs, the resulting products have experienced still other problems. Chief among these additional problems is that these previous attempts to produce fluid impervious drinking lids or covers have usually resulted in the manufacture of products having rather complex designs. While these improved lids, or covers, have operated with some degree of success, the complex designs of these resulting covers have made them burdensome and costly to manufacture. Further, these rather complex designs have proven to be either difficult, or impossible to effectively clean. Consequently, after prolonged use, or after the drinking vessel has been used for a period of time with a drink which contains sugar, or the like, such operating parts of these drinking vessel lids or covers become sticky and then begin to malfunction. Still further, the sticky residue resulting from the fluid which is deposited on such operating parts of these prior art drinking lids create an unsanitary condition which eventually renders the drinking vessel lid or top unserviceable.
Therefore, a flow control valve for dispensing a source of fluid from a vessel which avoids the detriments individually associated with the prior art devices, and which provides a convenient means by which a user may easily open and close a vessel containing a fluid to be dispensed, and which additionally can be easily disassembled for cleaning, and the like, is the subject matter of the present invention.